That light switch is disgusting!

[Katrin Baumgarten] has fourteen switches that are made to gross you out. From a button that retreats into its hole as your finger approaches, to a mysterious goo-oozing faceplate, to a hairy housing that gets aroused as your try to flip it on, the intrigue is enough to get you to try out the next creepy node in the network. There’s a clip of several different switches after the break and if that’s not enough she’s got more on her Vimeo channel.

As mentioned by yuppicide, only three switches videoed despite them being labelled 1-6

Shame the artist didn’t hide or camouflage the IR rangers and holes. I fully expect that they’d claim it’s because anticipation is a large part of disgust, and seeing something unusual on a switch causes you to distrust it, but some on, have some pride in your work.

Having created electronics for other people’s art installations, I would say this is pretty good work if she did it herself. Often artists are too preoccupied with concepts and don’t pay as much attention to the [technical] execution. I have seen some pretty poor “hacks” when it comes to artists building their own structures/mechanisms/etc. and I thought this project was pretty neat and well done. I would have liked more “hair” on the hairy switch though ;-)